A replica of Charlotte Brontë's bracelet on the red carpet

Last night, under the rain, was the premiere of Wuthering Heights in London. As usual, lots and lots of sites are talking about it, so let us just highlight a few. Vogue focuses on Margot Robbie's bracelet:

While Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights proved itself a lightning rod for controversy from the jump, Margot Robbie has the stamp of approval from Emily Brontë herself – or, as close as one can get to it, anyway.

For the London premiere, Robbie wore a replica of a bracelet once made of the writer’s own hair. A piece of Victorian mourning jewellery, the original piece was owned by Brontë’s sister, Charlotte, and made from Emily and Anne Brontë’s hair. Haworth-based Wyedean Weaving fashioned a reproduction of the 175-year-old bracelet. (Hannah Jackson)

EDIT: More details about the bracelet are available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum website: 

Last night at the London premiere of “Wuthering Heights” Oscar-nominated actress and producer Margot Robbie walked the red carpet in Leicester Square wearing a custom Dilara Findikoglu inspired by a bracelet that belonged to Charlotte Brontë.

The intricate, delicate bracelet features hair from two people, believed to be her sisters, Emily and Anne. During the Victorian era hair jewellery was fashionable and widely worn and it was common practice to make mourning jewellery incorporating the hair of a deceased relative. The bracelet is made of a wide band of braided hair with a gold clasp set with garnets and has been owned by the Museum since 1923.

Also on Page Six, Harper's Bazaar, Just Jared, and many others. Daily Mail focuses on the whole rain thing at the premiere.

Pinkvilla interviewed Jacob Elordi:

"Wuthering Heights has been around for so long that I think we all have a sense of what the story is that we’ve seen or heard about many times, but most of us really don’t know it, don’t know the text as well as we think. Hopefully, this film will reignite ideas that others already have about Wuthering Heights, as it did for me," he says. [...]

He shares his thoughts on getting into the project and choosing the script, "I knew that with Emerald Fennell, this wouldn’t be the traditional character that we know in our consciousness, but that it would be Heathcliff interpreted through her lens, with her unique point of view. She knows the character and this story so thoroughly, and I was really interested in that interpretation. I believe in her as an artist and especially as a director, and I want to be in her cinematic world, however I can."

This interpretation by Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve, Saltburn), who has scripted and directed the film, comes amid a lot of questions about turning it into an almost-erotica. However, the actor himself is quite well-versed with it, expecting so while stepping into the project. He is ready to provide full support to the filmmaker and adds, "What Emerald captured in her script and ultimately in the film is the spirit of Emily Brontë, the spirit of Wuthering Heights, what is happening in the subtext of the book. She’s interpreting it through her own lens, through a modern lens, and that was exciting to me." (Ayushi Agrawal)

BBC says the actor practised his northern accent in the bath.

Ever wondered how an actor from Brisbane, Australia, perfects a Northern accent?

The answer may surprise you.

"I just practise it in the bath, over and over and over and over," said Jacob Elordi, who is starring as Heathcliffe in the hotly anticipated new film Wuthering Heights, set on the tempestuous Yorkshire moors.

"I like the meks and the teks, instead of take. I like the M-E-K, T-E-K," he said, spelling the words out. (Noor Nanji)

Sky News shares a short video interview with Margot Robbie at the London premiere. Reuters also talked to her  and Jacob Elordi at the premiere:

"Everyone's talking about how steamy it is, but I think people might be surprised about how emotional it is," Robbie, who also produced the movie, said on the red carpet. "It's pretty heart-wrenching, but beautiful. It leaves you with that full feeling, if that makes sense."

Elordi described the experience of making the movie as "the greatest journey" and "a wonderful adventure", saying that his version of the famed literary character was grounded in Fennell's vision.

"I just wanted it to be as, I don't know, sort of, truthful as possible, I suppose. But really, I'm in service to Emerald, so I just wanted to do whatever she wanted with him," said Elordi, who previously starred in Fennell's 2023 film "Saltburn". (Hanna Rantala)

Condé Nast Traveler shares some of the filming locations.

The Guardian reports on Emerald Fennell's conversation at the BFI Southbank in London.

Emerald Fennell has revealed that Margot Robbie asked if she could play the lead role in the adaptation of Wuthering Heights before she had approached the actor to do so.

Robbie, whose production company LuckyChap Entertainment produced the film, asked if she could play Cathy after reading the script. “I sent it to them to produce, and Margot luckily asked if she might play Cathy,” said Fennell in conversation at the BFI Southbank in London.

“I was very nervous to ask her, because I think we have a different relationship, and I didn’t want to put her on the spot,” she said. “I was like: ‘Do I go for it?’ No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t, because she’s braver than me. She asked me.”

However the decision to cast Robbie in the role of Cathy has led to much scepticism and scrutiny ahead of the film’s release, specifically for its departure from the original 1847 novel by Emily Brontë.

Robbie, 35, will play Catherine Earnshaw who is written to be in her late teens in the original novel. The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has also been criticised. In the book, the character is described by Brontë to be of “Gypsy” and “Lascar” (South Asian) descent, which accounts for the prejudice against the him in the book.

However Fennell defended her decision. “I can’t adapt the book as it is but I can approximate the way it made me feel,” she said. [...]

The director also spoke about the background behind the set design in the film, revealing that the wallpaper in Cathy’s bedroom was inspired by images of Robbie’s skin.

“We asked her to send us all her veins and her freckles, and then we printed it on silk and stuffed it and put latex over it so that it could sweat,” she said. “At first glance, you don’t see any of it, it’s just a beautiful pink room.”

“It’s like a visual example of what it feels like to be made a wife, to be made an object of beauty, to be a collector’s item.”

Other unconventional behind the scenes activity involved shrines Fennell made of Elordi and Robbie as a way to mimic the infatuation their respective characters have with one another in the film. “I was like: ‘I’m going to go through the internet, I’m going to find their best photos and then I’m going to make shrines in their bedrooms for each other,’” she said.

“So when Jacob went into his room, he had an insane shrine to worship not just Cathy, but Margot Robbie and then she had the same thing. There’s nothing more humanising than somebody’s first press photo.”

Fennell also spoke about the process of getting Charli xcx onboard to create the soundtrack for the film: “I sent Charli the script. Even though she was in the middle of the brat tour, the most busy person in the entire world, she read it immediately.”

“She called me and said: ‘What do you want?’ I said: ‘Well, a song would be nice.’ And she said: ‘How about an album?’ And I was like: ‘Yeah, cool.’”

“It’s so dorky, but it is my favourite album I’ve ever, ever heard in my life. She just got it.” (Sinéad Campbell)

The Guardian's audiobook of the week is aptly Wuthering Heights as read by Aimee Lou Wood, originally released in 2020:

Rare is the Wuthering Heights adaptation that fails to ruffle the feathers of the Brontë faithful. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film was criticised for its grit and gloom while Emerald Fennell’s new version, which arrives in cinemas on Valentine’s Day, was described as “aggressively provocative” after test screenings. Perhaps now is the time to return to the source material. In the audioverse, there have already been readings by Michael Kitchener, Daniel Massey, Juliet Stevenson, Patricia Routledge and Joanne Froggatt, though I favour this 2020 edition narrated by Aimee Lou Wood, of Sex Education and The White Lotus fame. [...]

Wood breathes fresh life into this tempestuous novel, capturing Nellie’s gossipy tone and the early wildness of Catherine and Heathcliff. As circumstances pull these once inseparable youngsters apart, that wild abandon curdles into desolation and discord that is carried down the generations. (Fiona Sturges)

In Vogue, fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra wonders whether Wuthering Heights was the Heated Rivalry of the Victorian era.

I first read Wuthering Heights when I was 10 years old, growing up in Paris. Or rather, it was read aloud to me in French by my babysitter, every Wednesday night, one chapter at a time, as I lay in bed. I remember the anticipation more than anything, counting the days until the next installment. But I also remember a persistent dread that felt inseparable from the thrill of the story. I could see it all so clearly in my mind: the wild windswept moors, the oppressive house, the dark Victorian clothes. Heathcliff especially felt terrifyingly, seductively alive. I was afraid of him and drawn to him in equal measure.

Nearly 30 years later, I picked up the novel again and read it in English for the first time. What surprised me most wasn’t just how different it felt but how difficult it was. The language is dense, complicated. I realized how much I had misremembered—or maybe how much I had romanticized. What I had held onto from childhood was the heat, the drama. But what I encountered as an adult was something dark and violent. Wuthering Heights offers very little comfort. It is a novel steeped in resentment and cruelty, in emotional and physical violence. There is very little tenderness or intimacy anywhere to be found.

And yet my attachment to the book never faded. In fact, it deepened. I loved Wuthering Heights so much that it became the starting point for my fall-winter 2025 collection. I was drawn to its severity, the way desire and repression exist side by side. I loved its darkness, its melancholy, and translating that emotional landscape into clothes felt instinctive. I even gifted the book to everyone who came to see the show, tucking small mementos and pictures within its pages to invite them into the same world that had shaped the collection.

When I reread Wuthering Heights for the third time recently, in anticipation of the upcoming film adaptation, I was also, like many people, absorbed (to use a euphemism!) in Heated Rivalry, a contemporary romance that shares, at least on the surface, striking similarities with Emily Brontë’s novel. Both stories are fueled by obsession, by that feeling that certain connections are inevitable, magnetic, impossible to resist. Both are about people who cannot stay away from one another, no matter the cost.

Yes, there are the obvious differences of time and place. And in Wuthering Heights, passion is not so much a choice as it is a sentence. Catherine and Heathcliff don’t just fall in love; they are overtaken and destroyed by it. Their love, which Catherine compares to “the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary” (ouch), leaves no space for tenderness, compromise, or peace. Heated Rivalry, by contrast, begins with obsession but doesn’t end there. Desire is acknowledged; feelings are named. Vulnerability is allowed to enter the story. Passion is not punished; it is tested, shared, and ultimately transformed. Love becomes something Shane and Ilya actively choose, not just something that happens to them. It is something that eventually heals them.

But both works—separated by two centuries—are not just stories of passionate love but of something more specific: exquisite, almost painful yearning. (You could add Bridgerton and The Summer I Turned Pretty to this genre.) Time and time again, we return to narratives built around ache and longing, stretched over long periods.

I wonder if this says something about what we are collectively missing. We live in a world of constant stimulation and access—to people, to images, to desire itself. Romance has become efficient, frictionless. Connection is everywhere, yet true intimacy often feels elusive or absent. We have, as a culture, become so good at swiping, ghosting, blocking, moving on, keeping things light that yearning almost feels subversive.

These stories don’t just promise romance; they promise intensity. They make desire feel consequential. In Heated Rivalry it shows up in the constant texting, the sense that Shane and Ilya are always thinking about each other, reaching for one another when they are apart. In Wuthering Heights, it takes a more feral form: an obsession that lingers long after separation and even death, an excitement bordering on mania when Catherine and Heathcliff are reunited. To want something—or someone—badly and over long periods of time feels almost radical in an age defined by immediacy and ease.

And both stories are about a fear of transgression that interferes with love. Brontë, of course, was writing in a world that allowed romantic love very few viable happy endings, especially for women and especially across class lines. Wuthering Heights was written at the dawn of the Victorian era, in a culture defined by rigid class hierarchy and strict gender roles. Marriage was economic.

Heated Rivalry is also shaped by constraint, just a modern version of it. Set within the hypermasculine world of professional hockey, where being openly gay can define—and destroy—a career, the risks are real. This is a love story between two men unfolding at a moment when “traditional” puritanical values are being reasserted, when gender roles are once again being tightly policed and social conformity is rewarded. And yet the story allows for the possibility of love blooming; it insists that intensity and tenderness can coexist.

Maybe this is why stories of yearning continue to grip us: They remind us that feeling deeply still matters, no matter what societal or other lines it crosses. That we all deserve passion, to yearn, to be yearned for. But where Wuthering Heights imagines love as destructive, contemporary stories like Heated Rivalry allow for revision. For choice, agency, care.

That evolution mirrors my own. I was once seduced by the idea of a love that overwhelmed, that burned. Today I am moved by passion that endures, that evolves, that makes room for tenderness, vulnerability, and intimacy without losing heat. If Wuthering Heights is a warning about what happens when love has no future, Heated Rivalry is a hopeful rewrite. Together they trace an arc from fatalism to agency, from tragedy to happy ending. And isn’t that an ending worth believing in?

Mental Floss lists '6 Romantic Period Books to Read if You Love 'Bridgerton'' and among them are

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, tells the story of Jane, a strong-willed protagonist who grows up an orphan and faces cruelty at her childhood home and her boarding school. She grows up and becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets her employer, Mr. Rochester. Jane and Rochester’s deepening connection is put to the test by hidden truths and societal pressures. The novel points to themes of independence, morality, love, and social class structure following Jane's journey to find personal and emotional fulfillment in a restrictive Victorian world. 

Wuthering Heights

The Brontë sisters, or should we say, Bell Brothers, were on a roll in 1847. The same year her sister Charlotte published Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë (Acton Bell) published her only novel, Wuthering Heights. Set on the wild Yorkshire moors, this Gothic tale unites intense themes of passion, obsession, revenge, and conflict. The story unfolds through multiple narrators, the primary being housekeeper Nelly Dean, as the orphaned Heathcliff grows up with the Earnshaw family and forms a deep and  unstable bond with Catherine Earnshaw. After Catherine marries another man, Heathcliff returns rich and ready for revenge, manipulating the Earnshaw and Linton families. With its brooding atmosphere and hints of the supernatural, Brontë’s novel overflows with passion and lingering resentment. (Logan DeLoye)

According to Tatler Asia, Wuthering Heights is now one of '9 spicy classic novels to read this Valentine’s Day'

7. ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

Set against the windswept Yorkshire moors, Brontë’s novel traces the all-consuming and often destructive love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Their bond is marked by obsession, jealousy and a relentless emotional intensity that drives the narrative across generations. Brontë explores how passion can both elevate and devastate, weaving in themes of revenge, social constraint and the dark impulses of desire. The novel’s Gothic atmosphere and raw portrayal of longing have inspired numerous adaptations, including the acclaimed 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which captures the brooding tension and turbulent romance of the original story, and more recently, filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s theatrical version starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, set for release on February 13. The novel has earned its place among spicy classic novels to read this Valentine’s Day, for its unflinching depiction of emotional and physical desire, offering a canonical example of fervent and tumultuous love in literature. (Chonx Tibajia)

People who enjoy actual so-called spicy novels are going to be massively disappointed.

While Collider lists '9 Legendary Gothic Books [which] Became Movie Masterpieces'.

8 ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) – 'Wuthering Heights' (1939)

"Oh, God! It is unutterable." This one's back in the conversation thanks to the upcoming Emerald Fennell adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Emily Brontë’s only novel remains one of literature’s most tempestuous love stories. Set on the storm-battered Yorkshire moors, it follows Heathcliff, a foundling consumed by his obsession with Catherine Earnshaw, a passion so violent it transcends life and death. The book is gothic in its claustrophobia and psychological intensity, delving deep into revenge, class, and the self-destructive power of love.

William Wyler’s 1939 film adaptation, with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine, powerfully captures the tale’s doomed romanticism and elemental fury. It's a faithful reproduction of the novel's tone, if not all its narrative beats. The Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography transforms the moors into a landscape of emotional chaos, while Olivier’s brooding performance brings the character vividly to life.

7 ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847) – 'Jane Eyre' (2011)

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me." Emily's sister Charlotte revolutionized Gothic romance in her own way with this morally serious, psychologically complex tale. The novel follows orphaned Jane from a brutal childhood to her position as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls for the enigmatic Mr. Rochester, only to discover his terrible secret. Beneath these Gothic trappings is a moving story of integrity, independence, and female selfhood.

Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 adaptation, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, restores the novel’s eerie sensuality and feminist fire. It’s one of the most emotionally authentic versions of the book, with less melodrama and more moral clarity. Fukunaga frames Brontë’s world not as fantasy, but as realism touched by ghosts of memory, trauma, and forbidden love. The film's muted palette and candlelit interiors evoke both repression and longing, while strong lead performances (from Wasikowska, especially) do the rest of the heavy lifting. (Luc Haasbroek)

Intermediality and Female Agency

A recent Bachelor's Degree Final Project:

Intermediality and Female Agency in "Wuthering Heights": A Comparative Study of Brontë’s Novel and Emma Rice’s Theatrical Adaptation

by Andrea Villanova Pérez

Neumann, Claus Peter (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2025

Filología Inglesa y Alemana department,

 Este trabajo analiza y compara la novela clásica de Emily Brontë "Cumbres Borrascosas" con su adaptación moderna al teatro, escrita y producida por Emma Rice. Mediante una revisión del fenómeno de intermedialidad en el proceso de la adaptación, se exploran los elementos que han sido integrados en la obra de teatro para crear una reinterpretación contemporánea. Este estudio también investiga la manera en que ambas obras enfocan el tema de la agencia femenina, dentro de sus respectivos contextos. Se concluye que Rice ofrece una visión renovada y dinámica de la novela de Brontë, en la que se mantiene fiel a la esencia del texto original, empleando las características multimediales del teatro para conectar con la audiencia y fomentar la empatía hacia las inquietudes femeninas representadas.

Read More

'Nothing beats the thrills and seductions of Emily Brontë’s novel'

Among all the Wuthering Heights 2026 news stories told and retold ad nauseam, there are always small gems. Today's is an article by John Mullan on 'How Wuthering Heights seduced its readers' in The New Statesman.

Nothing beats the thrills and seductions of Emily Brontë’s novel

"Drive me mad” implored the first billboards advertising director Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming film. So proverbial for passionate extremity is Emily Brontë’s novel that Wuthering Heights did not even need to feature on the adverts, which loudly proclaimed the film as a story of erotic compulsion. Is this what Brontë gave us? Is it why teenagers with a literary bent still love her novel?

‘“Drive me mad” is a phrase that does come from the book; it is spoken by Heathcliff, immediately after his beloved Catherine’s death, as he begs her ghost to haunt him. “I know that ghosts have wandered on Earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad!” As he finishes speaking, he smashes his head against the trunk of a tree, already stained with “splashes of blood” from earlier acts of self-violence. Maddened is just what he is.

Is Wuthering Heights a story of sexual obsession that we can still recognise? Fennell has said that she wants to do justice to the “primal, sexual” aspects of the novel. Yet the book is unusual in its depiction of sexual desire, which is obscure or unsatisfied or sublimated into anger. You might not guess from all the passionate embraces in film adaptations, but the love between Heathcliff and Catherine is never consummated. It is rooted in their shared childhood and early adolescence: she is only 15 when she becomes engaged to Edgar Linton, and the spurned Heathcliff, overhearing her say that “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now”, leaves Wuthering Heights, in the Yorkshire moors where they live, for three years. Only on his return, finding her married and mortally ill, does he, observed by housekeeper Nelly Dean, get to grasp her and give her “more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I dare say”. The fact that she is five months pregnant by her husband is mentioned only six chapters later, when, aged just 18, she dies a few hours after the premature birth of her daughter – as if the reality of her marital sex life is to be ignored.

Nelly Dean, with the privileged access of a servant to the Earnshaw and Linton families, narrates most of the novel to a prim gentleman called Lockwood, who has rented Thrushcross Grange, the Lintons’ former home. Everything is filtered through these two, and the accounts of other characters that they report. The stories within stories can be dizzying. At one stage, for instance, Lockwood is telling the reader of what Nelly Dean has told him of what Isabella told her of a violent quarrel between Hindley Earnshaw and Heathcliff. What we see and hear is utterly removed from any authorial judgment. Who knows what Emily Brontë thought of how her characters behave? Film adaptations have been powerless to replicate the novel’s complex business of narrations within narrations.

Lockwood’s narration, which opens and closes the novel, holds within it a story that goes back 30 years – a family saga reaching across generations. With him we look into a world where characters are driven by passions that are extreme and sometimes unintelligible. The attentive reader will surely share his fascinated incomprehension. Heathcliff’s emotional expressions sometimes verge on absurdity. Comparing his love for Catherine to Edgar Linton’s, he declares, “If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in 80 years, as I could in a day.”

As well as being a vehicle of passion, the novel is a thing of great formal intricacy. Time is Emily Brontë’s element, and her novel has the most beautifully elaborate time scheme of almost any 19th-century novel. (Like Jane Austen, the author worked with calendars, or almanacs, to ensure a consistent internal chronology.) Events take place in times distant from its Victorian readers. First published in 1847, it begins with a date, “1801”, that thrusts the story back into the past, even for its original readers – for most, beyond their own memories. Once Nelly Dean begins narrating, it then travels even further back, for the unfolding of the story of Catherine and Heathcliff, to the 1770s and 1780s – the equivalent of a novel of today setting its main action in the 1950s and 1960s. We are removed to a time as well as a place cut off from the world. This is a Victorian novel designed to escape its times, with less connection to Victorian values than any other novel of the period.

The novel’s narrative structure enacts the way in which the present is sucked back into the past, but we are also sometimes jolted into the present tense of Lockwood’s confused processing of what he has been hearing and seeing. Present jars against past. Interruptions keep reminding us we are listening to a narration by Nelly Dean – “The clock is on the stroke of 11” – even as Lockwood urges her to continue. The reader shares with Lockwood the experience of waking up from a different time – the shock of re-entering the present.

Seasons revolve throughout the novel, each marker of the time of year usually a description of the weather:

On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November, a fresh watery afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered leaves, and the cold, blue sky was half hidden by clouds – dark grey streamers, rapidly mounting from the west and boding abundant rain.

Meteorology had never been so precise in English fiction before. Types of cloud and the weather they portend are exactly described. We are used to hearing Wuthering Heights being called “elemental”, and certainly its characters are closer to the elements than in most novels, closer to the cold and the wet, but also to the occasional blessing of warm days. Everyone is season-sensitive.

The reader may hardly be conscious of the frequent small details of the ever-changing weather, but they accumulate to convince us that this is a real place, with its own special climate. The sense of place is extraordinary, yet also utterly remote. In the novel’s first paragraph, Lockwood marvels at his new-found disconnect from the world. “In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society”. He jokes that it is “a perfect misanthropist’s Heaven”, which is as ill-judged as most of his jokes. Hatred of your fellow human beings does indeed flourish in this place. “My mind is so eternally secluded in itself,” says Heathcliff, near the novel’s end.

This is less a love story than a hate story. Like several other film adaptations of Brontë’s novel, Fennell’s version will apparently stop at its mid-point, with the death of Catherine. We will not have the complicated enactment of Heathcliff’s revenge: his tricking of Hindley Earnshaw out of the property of Wuthering Heights and ensuring his early death (aged 27) through alcoholism; his degradation of Hindley’s son, Hareton; his cunning arrangement of the marriage of Catherine, daughter of Edgar Linton, to his enfeebled son, Linton, ensuring that he becomes the owner of Thrushcross Grange, the Lintons’ family home. Ironically, without its second phase, the story is a grimmer one. It excludes the growing affection and final marriage of Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton. In Brontë’s telling, these two finally escape the bitterness and fury of the older generation.

It is strange that Heathcliff has become a Byronic anti-hero, even sex symbol. He expresses contempt for Isabella Linton’s marrying him “under a delusion… picturing in me a hero of romance”. However abused he was by the jealous Hindley in his youth, his extreme violence is unforgivable. On his first visit to Wuthering Heights, Lockwood notices that, when young Catherine answers him back, Heathcliff lifts his hand and she instantly springs to a safer distance, “obviously acquainted with its weight”. Much later in the book, we actually see him strike her down. Isabella describes how, when the drunken Hindley confronts him with a knife and pistol, Heathcliff wrenches them from his grasp, slashing Hindley’s arm. He then “kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags”. When Isabella tells him that he would have proved an “abominable” husband to Catherine too, he throws a knife at her head, cutting her beneath the ear. She throws a knife back at him. Violence spreads from one character to another. No film has dared do justice to it.

The first reviewers were both intrigued and repelled. “The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity,” wrote one. Yet the same reviewer added, “The reality of unreality has never been so aptly illustrated as in the scenes of almost savage life which Ellis Bell has brought so vividly before us”. “The reality of unreality” seems a good phrase for the credibility and yet utter peculiarity of this novel, which will always take us to its own remote place and time zone.

Compare that to Helen Coffey's cry in The Independent: 'I’m ready to admit it – Wuthering Heights is an awful, awful book' and 'It’s a shame, then, that it’s such an uncompromisingly terrible read'.

"Believe women” is a phrase we’ve heard a lot in recent times – and quite rightly. But there is one instance in which, I must confess, I don’t believe women. And that is every time one tells me that Wuthering Heights is her favourite book.

Let's stop here for a minute: why only women? 

I still remember the first time I picked up a copy of Emily Brontë’s much-vaunted 1847 literary classic. I’d loved eldest Brontë sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre; I’d developed a soft spot for the quiet radicalism of youngest sister Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Now, in my mid-twenties, it was finally time to take on the most extravagant, gothic of masterpieces, penned by the extraordinary middle child herself.

Ill-fated lovers torn asunder, yearning across bleak northern vistas, desire so powerful it transcends the grave – I was all set to swoon over this “tragic love story” between Cathy and Heathcliff, in which the backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors “represents the wildness of Heathcliffe’s [sic] character” (this information having been gleaned from an episode of Friends in which Phoebe and Rachel join a book group).

And this Heathcliff character sounded like “a bit of me”, as they say on Love Island, a heady mix of Mr Darcy’s brooding, glowering allure and Rhett Butler’s arrogant, magnetic charm. I’ll admit it: I was ready to have my head turned by a sexy leading man in period dress. Sue me.

Yet it wasn’t long before I found myself experiencing the literary equivalent of all dressed up with nowhere to go. Each of the characters, I swiftly discovered, was profoundly and irredeemably unlikeable, by turns cruel, mean-spirited, selfish, wet and/or weak. This cast of misfits ended up dropping dead from all manner of fevers and childbearing and alcoholism and general malaise – which might have elicited some kind of emotional response, had I cared whether any of them lived or died. As it was, the only rational reaction to each demise seemed to be, simply, “good riddance”.

Just to make things even more insufferable, every one of them seemed to be called an unholy combination of the same names mixed together – Linton, Earnshaw, Heathcliff – in a way that scrambled my brain and rivalled only Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude for forcing repeated consultation of the family tree. The piece de resistance is surely Catherine Linton, herself daughter of the infamous Cathy Earnshaw, who marries first one cousin, then another, to become Catherine Heathcliff, then Catherine Earnshaw. It all feels nothing short of elite-level trolling from Emily.

Then there’s the novel’s non-linear narrative framework, which uses multiple narrators telling stories within stories within stories: a kind of early Inception with none of Christopher Nolan’s joyful spectacle. This device, largely panned by critics at the time, has since been held up as a stroke of genius – which just goes to show that you only need wait a sufficient amount of time before something becomes fashionable (as demonstrated by the cursed resurgence of the bucket hat).

Within all this relaying of tales, Emily also saw fit to write swathes of text phonetically to indicate certain characters’ regional accents. The reader couldn’t be trusted to imagine a thick West Riding brogue, and so we’re invited to wade through mind-curdling dialogue such as “T’ maister’s down I’ t’ fowld”, “Yah dunnut loike wer company, there’s maister’s” and, a personal favourite, “There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght”. It’s enough to make me reconsider my stance on book burning.

And, at the heart of it all, that fabled “love story” between Cathy and Heathcliff. It’s been romanticised and elevated as some kind of tragic, star-crossed lovers’ tale across multiple big and small-screen adaptations over the years – the latest being Emerald Fennell’s upcoming “Wuthering Heights”, starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, with the quote marks intentionally inserted to stress that this zeitgeisty hot take is likely to stray pretty far from the original. The film’s release date is slated for Valentine’s weekend; the trailer pronounces it to be inspired by “the greatest love story of all time”. To which I can only scratch my head and say, “You what, mate?” I don’t know what Emerald’s been reading, but it surely can’t be the same book that has been consistently disappointing me for more than a decade.

Far be it from me to deny any woman the pleasure of losing her mind over Jacob Elordi sporting a gruff Yorkshire accent and a cravat, but let the record show that the character of Heathcliff, as Emily wrote him, is not a romantic lead. “Grade A a***hole” would be far more accurate a description: a nasty, spiteful abuser who, it’s very heavily implied, commits acts of sexual violence against his wife Isabella after marrying her out of spite. He’s literature’s deeply problematic toxic ex that we keep “hero-washing”, somehow collectively convinced that maybe he wasn’t really that bad, after all. (Spoiler: he was.)

His and Cathy’s doomed romance has about as much in common with love as a writhing pit of venomous snakes, a noxious concoction of possessiveness, jealousy and unhealthy fascination that poisons everything it touches. I suppose one could argue that they’re a perverted version of soulmates, but only in the same way that the two very worst people you’ve ever met were “made for each other”.

In fact, it seems to me that the only good thing to have come out of Wuthering Heights is the near-perfect 1978 Kate Bush song of the same name, which captures all of the novel’s best bits – and allows you to wail, “It’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home!” like a banshee while attempting an interpretive dance – without actually having to read the damn thing.

Of course, we’re all going to have different opinions and different tastes – what a world it would be if we were all the same, etc etc – but I’m afraid I simply refuse to give credence to the idea that anyone has ever derived genuine pleasure from trudging their way through this endlessly maudlin tale.

Yes, that's why it's 179 years after it was first published and we are still talking about it while it keeps on inspiring artists all over the world.

Onto more people who actually get the book: The New York Times wonders, 'Is ‘Wuthering Heights’ Actually the Greatest Love Story of All Time?'

Catherine and Heathcliff. Since 1847, when Emily Brontë published her only novel, “Wuthering Heights,” those ill-starred lovers have inflamed the imaginations of generations of readers.

Who are these two? Definitely not the people you meet on vacation. The DNA of “Wuthering Heights,” set in a wild and desolate corner of Northern England, runs through the dark, gothic, obsessive strains of literary romance. Heathcliff, a tormented soul with terrible manners and a worse temper, may be the English novel’s most problematic boyfriend — mad, bad and dangerous to know. What redeems him, at least in the reader’s eyes, is Catherine’s love.

As children growing up in the same highly dysfunctional household, the two form a bond more passionate than siblinghood and purer than lust. (I don’t think a 179-year-old book can be spoiled, but some plot details will be revealed in what follows.) They go on to marry other people, living as neighbors and frenemies without benefits until tragedy inevitably strikes. In the meantime, they roil and seethe — it’s no accident that “wuthering” is a synonym for “stormy” — occasionally erupting into ardent eloquence. [...]

This all-consuming love, thwarted in the book by circumstances, has flourished beyond its pages. Thanks to Catherine and Heathcliff — and also to the harsh, windswept beauty of the Yorkshire setting — “Wuthering Heights,” a touchstone of Victorian literature, has become a fixture of popular culture.

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon played Heathcliff and Catherine in William Wyler’s 1939 multi-Oscar-nominated film adaptation.c

Since then, the volatile Heathcliff has been embodied by a succession of British brooders: Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy. At least for Gen X, the definitive Catherine will always be Kate Bush, dancing across the English countryside in a bright red dress in an indelible pre-MTV music video.

Now, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ll have Emerald Fennell’s new R-rated movie version, with Margot Robbie (recently Barbie) as Catherine and Jacob Elordi (recently Frankenstein’s monster) as Heathcliff.

Is theirs the greatest love story of all time, as the movie’s trailer insists? It might be. For the characters, the love itself overwhelms every other consideration of feeling. For Brontë, the most accomplished poet in a family of formidable novelists, that love is above all a matter of words. The immensity of Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion is measured by the intensity of their language, which of course is also Brontë’s. [...]

But the point of their attempts to justify their love is, finally, to show the inadequacy of words to capture the tidal movements and volcanic explosions of their souls.

They — and Emily Brontë — are giving voice to a shared experience that defies articulation, pushing language to the very limit of its expressive capacity and beyond.

Which is what romance lives to do. It’s a genre often proudly unconstrained by what is possible, rational or sane, unafraid to favor sensation over sense or to pose unanswerable questions about the human heart. How could Catherine love a man like Heathcliff? How could he know himself to be worthy of her love?

We’ll never really have the answers, which is why we’ll never stop reading. And why no picture will ever quite match the book’s thousands of feverish, hungry, astonishing words. (A.O. Scott)

Airbnb Newsroom announces that you can stay at a replica of Cathy's bedroom in Wuthering Heights 2026.

West Yorkshire’s Brontë Country is having its moment – rapidly becoming one of the UK’s hottest romantic destinations. As anticipation builds for Emerald Fennell’s new film “Wuthering Heights”, only in cinemas 13th February in time for Valentine’s Day, Airbnb data shows the film is putting West Yorkshire on the map for UK Gen Z, with searches for Valentine’s stays up 67% – signalling a new fascination with romance on the moorlands.1

With 40% of UK adults now travelling to locations they’ve seen in period dramas2, set-jetting is reshaping the travel map – with West Yorkshire catapulted into the spotlight as travellers seek out brooding landscapes, literary passion and timeless romance, as it stars as the backdrop to the classic tale and where most of the film was shot. In fact, searches among UK guests for Airbnb stays in Haworth – the historic Yorkshire village where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote – have surged by over 200% this winter compared to last year.3 

“Wuthering Heights” is a bold and original imagining of one of the greatest love stories of all time, centered on Cathy and Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion turns from romantic to intoxicating in an epic tale of lust, love and madness – a longing guests can discover as this Valentine’s as Cathy Earnshaw invites couples to step inside her lavish Thrushcross Grange bedroom in West Yorkshire for an immersive overnight stay inspired by Emerald Fennell’s sizzling take on the classic novel, exclusively on Airbnb. [...]

Inspired by Emerald Fennell’s exquisite film, the room channels Cathy’s intensity, offering guests a deeply personal window into her inner world, almost becoming a character of its own – a feverish ode to Cathy as devised by her husband, Edgar Linton. The skin-toned walls and layered textures make the space feel saturated with her presence, from strands of her hair woven into the table to the vein-like patterns that seem to pulse through the cushions. 

The dining room at our Thrushcross Grange is also brought to life, dressed in silver-toned finery and styled to mirror the film’s world. Here, guests will be served rich Yorkshire dishes during an indulgent and themed candle-lit dinner, echoing the opulent meals seen on screen.

Beyond these rooms, couples can fall in love again and again, with the stay also including a horseback ride across the countryside, an indulgent afternoon tea, and an intimate listening experience of Charl xcx’s “Wuthering Heights” – in their own modern, untamed Yorkshire moment. [...]

Cathy’s Bedroom will be available three separate stays for up to two guests each for  stay across multiple days between 27 February and 4 March, completely for free – exclusively on Airbnb. 

This is on many, many sites including Forbes, Ireland Live and Elite Daily.

The Guardian takes a look at the reactions of first viewers on social media and also has some paid content about the film: on the cast, on whether it will work as 'an antidote to today’s lacklustre dating scene' and on its 'captivating looks and sounds'. Inkl claims that Margot Robbie is channelling 'Brontë’s Cathy with unexpected jewellery' during her promo tour, while Hello! states that she 'reignites Brontë beauty' (?). The Independent wonders whether 'Wuthering Heights just set the biggest beauty trend for 2026'. Vogue (and many others, of course) has an article on yesterday's London photocall.

According to Time, Jane Eyre 2011 is one of 'The 50 Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century'.

Even if you've never read Charlotte Brontë’s gothic romance Jane Eyre, you pretty much know the story: An impoverished but unabashedly intelligent orphan-girl governess arrives at the estate of a rich, surly, mysterious gentleman, who quickly realizes that this small, seemingly mouselike creature is the only human being on the planet who can understand him. In one of the most ardent lines ever committed to paper, he welcomes her into his life—"My equal is here, and my likeness"—with a sense of near-mystical wonder. Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2011 adaptation of Brontë’s book—starring Michael Fassbender as the brooding man-with-a-secret, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and Mia Wasikowska as the at-first meek but ultimately fiery heroine Jane—is tuned to the beating pulse of that line, without ever resorting to dumb, bodice-ripping cliches. Rochester is a man whose kindness is the cutting kind, and Fassbender, with his straight, even teeth and mocking eyes, knows it. Sex is threatening, as Brontë knew, and Wasikowska and Fassbender make this particular dance look exceedingly dangerous. He’s a feral being who looks as if he could swallow Jane whole, but she stands up to him in every way: Wasikowska’s performance rings with understated fierceness. Jane Eyre, as Brontë wrote her, is a small girl who makes for a big story. Wasikowska steps easily and naturally into those little footprints stamped out nearly 180 years ago, in a movie that makes them seem as if they were made only yesterday. (Stephanie Zacharek)

Read More

More new Heights

Two more new editions of Wuthering Heights:

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

Afterword by Dr Sally Minogue

Wordsworth Editions - Empress Collection

ISBN: 9781840229165

February 14, 2025

Exclusively designed cover by Carmen Di Mauro

Silver foil blocking combined with spot-gloss UV on a matte laminated dust jacket

Textured hardback cover complete with matching foil blocking (on front, spine and back)

Full coloured hand-designed, patterned endpapers

Digitally sprayed edged on all 3 sides in full colour

Co-ordinating head and tail bands

Matching ribbon marker

Bespoke design chapter headers

Cumbres borrascosas (limited special edition with stained edges)

Emily Brontë

Penguin Classics

ISBN: 978-8491057819

November 2025

Read More

'Impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it'

The Australian spoke to Emerald Fennell via Zoom.

Emerald Fennell has been haunted by Wuthering Heights for most of her life.

“I’ve had this thing in my heart and my head since I was 14,” she says. “I always knew that if I was ever going to be allowed to, I was going to try to adapt it.”

“Suddenly, you walk into it,” she adds, “and it’s the most uncanny, incredible feeling.”

We connect over Zoom in Los Angeles. Fennell is sitting in a room modelled on her film’s version of the library at Thrushcross Grange: a glossy carmine acrylic floor, a sculpted fireplace formed from a tangle of hands. She is wearing a romantic grey cowl-neck dress. Her accent is deliciously plummy as she flits between girlish excitement and the cool assurance of someone who studied English at Oxford.

Fennell wanted her Wuthering Heights to tap into the primal, obsessive feeling she remembered from reading Bronte as a teenager. Does she think she’s managed it? “Yes,” she says, without hesitation. “I do. I think that’s a testament to the incredible people I work with. Every single person connected deeply to this feeling – the feeling of physical devastation and love and yearning.” [...]

When Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, Victorian reviewers reacted with horror. One called it “coarse”, another “utterly hateful”; another wondered how anyone could have written such a book without taking their own life.

“When you read the first reviews, they’re incandescent with rage,” Fennell says, with delight. “They’re not just saying ‘We don’t like this book’, they’re saying ‘These people are an abomination’.”

Early test-screening responses to Fennell’s film were similarly incensed, with viewers describing it as “aggressively provocative” and “stylised depravity”. The descriptions are not inaccurate. It is certainly provocative. Depraved too. But it is also an all-consuming romance.

“All I ever want is to make things that make people want to talk,” Fennell says. “What we wanted to do was give people that feeling of deep, uncontrollable emotion.”

Some accuse her of needless provocation. She shrugs. “I’m just a goth girl,” she says. “I just like feeling. I want to feel.”

Bronte’s lovers are not easy to admire. Catherine and Heathcliff are cruel, manipulative, vindictive, violent and emotionally catastrophic. In modern parlance, “toxic” does the trick.

“When I read the book, the thing I’ve always come back to is this extremely combustible relationship between two very difficult, in many ways unlikeable, characters,” Fennell says.

“I think that’s the reason the book is so enduring,” she continues. “Because it is shocking. It is sadomasochistic. It is difficult. And it is a love story.”

She is well aware that describing her adaptation as “the greatest love story of all time” has caused what she describes, cheerfully, as “an enormous amount of argument”.

“I love to argue about things,” she says, evidently chuffed.

But does she really think it’s a love story?

“The reason I connected to the material is because of the love,” she says. “I don’t think anyone’s reading Wuthering Heights for the revenge. It’s because the connection between these two people is so intense and deeply rooted and profound that everything else gets destroyed in its wake. I’m really only interested in things that can hold the things that are troubling.” [...]

“It’s like Burton and Taylor,” Fennell says. “Two people who are individually unbelievably talented and beautiful, but together it’s just dynamite.”

Fennell had directed Elordi before, in Saltburn, where he played Felix Catton, an arrestingly beautiful aristocratic university student. When she saw the 28-year-old in costume, she thought he resembled the Heathcliff on the cover of her teenage copy of Wuthering Heights.

“There’s this deep thing in him of complete and utter tenderness,” she says. Because so much of Heathcliff’s behaviour is monstrous – hanging pets, beating children – she needed an actor with “something you’d forgive”.

Robbie, 35, has produced all of Fennell’s films through LuckyChap, the production company she runs with her husband, Tom Ackerley, but this marks the first time she has appeared on screen for her. She had never read Bronte’s novel before Fennell told her she was adapting it, and deliberately avoided the book until the screenplay was finished. She wanted her first encounter with the story to be Fennell’s version, whom she calls “a genius screenplay writer”.

Fennell lights up when she talks about her heroine. “I’ve always felt like Cathy, in particular, is a little spoilt brat,” she says. “She’s manipulative, she’s capricious, she’s spoilt, she’s cruel, she’s kind of a sadist. She’s so many things, and yet she is so loveable. I think people connect to her so deeply.”

In casting Robbie, she knew she needed someone who could carry all of that and get away with it.

“With Margot, I just knew it needed somebody who, in any era, you would never argue with,” Fennell laughs. “Because whatever they said, you’d be like ‘Fair enough. I forgive you.’ ” [...]

This appetite for sensation sits oddly alongside the relentless stream of surveys and think pieces suggesting younger audiences want less sex on screen. Fennell’s films are not prudish.

“I think we’re very out of our bodies at the moment,” she says. “Very detached from things and people. When I see a movie or read a book, I want a visceral reaction. I want to feel something in my body.”

For Fennell, the sex in Wuthering Heights is not gratuitous but a way of getting to the guts of the story.

“The book is extremely sexy,” she says. “That’s why people were so shocked when it was published. To shy away from that felt wrong.”

“You can only really invest in something sexy if you care,” she adds. “People have been surprised by how romantic this film is. What felt really rewarding was how much it makes your heart feel.”

“But also,” she adds, “it’s just life, isn’t it? The stuff that’s interesting is a bit sexy. A lot of that is sex and a lot of it is not sex.”

Her film is not slavishly devoted to Brontë, hence the quotation marks around the film’s title.She cites Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist ending in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as a blueprint.

“There’s a kind of wish fulfilment,” she says. “I’ve always mourned the loss of being able to see what would happen if Catherine and Heathcliff were able to see their love through. That felt crucial to me.” [...]

She places Charli in a lineage of transgressive female artists – the painter Paula Rego, the poet Sharon Olds – women whose work is not comforting but necessary.

“The thing about Charli is she’s a genius,” she says. “A proper genius.”

Their collaboration began casually. Fennell sent her the script for Wuthering Heights, asking only how it made her feel.

“She called me and was like ‘I’ve read it, I love it, what are you thinking?’ And I was like ‘I don’t know, maybe a song?’ And she said ‘How about an album?’

“And I was like ‘Well, yes. Obviously that would be the greatest thing in the world.’ ” (Geordie Gray)

A columnist from The Spectator argues that Jacob Elordi isn’t a ‘whitewashed’ Heathcliff.

While Brontë’s description of Heathcliff as “dark-skinned” is inarguable, the Victorian use of the term did not mean “black” or “mixed-race,” as there was no such interpretation of the phrase in 1847, when the novel was written. There were other, considerably more robust, references to black-skinned people used by Brontë’s contemporaries. If she had wished to refer to Heathcliff as a person of color, she would have done so in terms that most people would now regard as racist, or in the very least as profoundly unacceptable.

I am usually the last person to rush to the defense of Emerald Fennell, but the furore in this instance seems entirely misplaced. She herself has said of Elordi’s casting that “I think the thing is everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it. I don’t know, I think I was focusing on the sado-masochistic elements of it.” The actor, meanwhile, tactfully dodged the discourse altogether and commented that “this is Emerald’s vision and these are the images that came to her head at 14 years old; somebody else’s interpretation of a great piece of art is what I’m interested in — new images, fresh images, original thoughts.”

We live in an age where “race-blind” and “gender-blind” approaches to acting are supposedly the norm, but the furore here shows that this modish approach is only welcomed if it goes in an approved direction. It’s perfectly acceptable to think Wuthering Heights is going to be bad, but the reasons for its potential failure are far simpler than this manufactured contretemps. Let’s have less wuthering nonsense and more clear-sighted common sense, as otherwise these shenanigans will become regrettably commonplace.

Fennell has said, with misguided optimism, “The great thing about this movie is that it could be made every year and it would still be so moving and so interesting,” she added. “There are so many different takes. I think every year we should have a new one.” For the love of Brontë – and our collective sanity – please let this one be the last one for a while. (Alexander Larman)

The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, World of Reel, and JoBlo do a round-up of what the first viewers are saying about the film on X. Reviews from actual critics are embargoed until Monday.

Vogue has a podcast on which Margot Robbie and costume designer Jacqueline Durran talk all things Wuthering Heights.

Poprant looks at previous adaptations.

The BBC has talked with Dr Claire O'Callaghan about Wuthering Heights.

Authored by one "Ellis Bell", Wuthering Heights was met with rather mixed reviews when it was first published in 1847. Some were scathing, horrified by its "brutal cruelty" and portrayal of a "semi-savage love". Others acknowledged the book's "power and cleverness", "its delineation forcible and truthful". Many said it was simply "strange".

Despite the popularity of gothic fiction at the time, it's perhaps unsurprising that Wuthering Heights shocked readers in the 19th Century, a time of strict moral scrutiny. "People did not know what to do with this book, because it has no clear moral angle," says Clare [sic] O'Callaghan, senior professor of Victorian literature at Loughborough University in the UK, and the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised. [...]

Some film and TV adaptations have skipped the second half of Wuthering Heights entirely, presumably because of its savagery and complexity – William Wyler's 1939 Oscar-winner ends shortly after Catherine's death, her ghost and Heathcliff wandering the moors. Robert Fuest's 1970 film starring Timothy Dalton also ends with her death, as does Andrea Arnold's 2011 film, which dedicates most of the screen time to the younger Catherine and Heathcliff.

But her death comes halfway through the novel and therefore many adaptations have missed out a further 18 years or so of plot, softening the ending and sanitising its darkest parts. A few have attempted to cover the whole story – including the BBC's 1967 series, which inspired Kate Bush to write her 1978 hit. But it's the BBC's 1978 mini-series (aided by its five-hour running time), which is held up as being the most faithful to the whole text.

Ignoring the latter part of the book "doesn't work", says Claire O'Callaghan. "I think love and vengeance are the engines of the book, and that's what so great about it… there's no boundary to the depths to which [Heathcliff] will go to, to make people pay," says O'Callaghan.

Heathcliff lives a life of torment and uncontainable grief, but inflicts that suffering on everyone around him and feels no remorse in doing so. By not righting his wrongs, and letting him die without further punishment, O'Callaghan says, Brontë poses more complex questions to the reader, rather than giving them answers: What is love? Does the marriage system work? What are the limits of violence?

That's part of the complex legacy of the novel. "Popular culture tends to tell us it's this great romance… when [readers] are encountering it for the first time, that jars, because the book is so different. It still has the ability to shock, and I think, like the Victorians, we're still grappling with how to define it and what to do with it," O'Callaghan says.

Another popular misconception of the novel is that it's unremittingly bleak, when, at times, it's quite funny. Nelly and Zillah, the two servants, are major gossips. Linton Heathcliff is a mopey, sickly and bratty child, who provokes an eye roll from the reader. And when you can understand what the farm servant Joseph is saying through his thick Yorkshire dialect, he is often a witty cynic, who never has anything nice to say. When Catherine falls ill after searching for Heathcliff in the rain, he snarkily croaks, "Running after t'lads, as usual?"

Lockwood's snootiness is amusing, too. "He is like a character from a Jane Austen novel who's walked into a Brontë world, and that, for me, is hilarious," says O'Callaghan. "If you read this book and take it as a kind of gothic satire to some extent, it's a completely different book. And I think that's one of the things, though. People take it very, very seriously, don't they? They're absolutely convinced that these are real characters, rather than this gothic, over-the-topness."

Emily Brontë never saw the success of her only novel, but we know that she read initial reviews. Her writing desk is on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, and it contains five clippings of Wuthering Heights reviews, which were largely negative. She died at the age of 30 from tuberculosis, around a year after Wuthering Heights was published. Behind her she leaves a masterpiece.

Whether you are a fierce lover or loather of Brontë's deeply flawed characters, the harrowing and unsettling plot and the toxic romance, Wuthering Heights has possessed its legions of fans throughout history – "driven us mad", you could say. We can be sure that Fennell's interpretation will not be the last. Whether anyone can do this book justice on screen, however, is a whole other question.

Hopefully, at least, we can all agree with one anonymous critic, who reviewed Wuthering Heights in January 1848. "It is impossible to begin and not finish it," they said, "and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it." (Molly Gorman)

A columnist from The Daily Beacon also focuses on the novel.

In this story, I saw the will to live be taken away from some characters because of the cruelty and suffering of others. Each character slowly falls into a trap of misery and it is because of this obsession with love.

It is hard to imagine the dire situation that these characters lived through, but, in the end, most of them found peace. After all the darkness, misery did not persevere. 

It was a beautifully written story, and if the movie sticks close to the plot, it will also be a beautiful movie. The meaning behind this story is so deep that I hope for those who do not read, that this movie has the same emotional impact as the book. (Shelby Wilson)

Keighley News reports that the film is attracting attention and visitors to the area. A contributor to Yorkshire Live writes about a trek to Top Withins. The same contributor also visited Holdsworth House in Halifax, where a replica of Cathy's bedroom in the film has been installed.

Recently inhabited by film stars Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie - who will soon take their turn as Heathcliff and Cathy in Emerald Fennell's long-awaited Wuthering Heights - Holdsworth House transports you to a time and place of rareified luxury. [...]

Holdsworth House was a home to the cast and crew of the new film, offering shelter from the winds of the moors as they prepared to bring Brontë's classic to the big screen. [...]

Two doors were opened, revealing Cathy's room at Thrushcross Grange. I felt like I had been transported into one of literature's most iconic bedrooms.

At first glance, there is nothing out of the ordinary. But look closer, and you'll notice there is something more macabre at work. The plush pink walls have light blue lines running down them, giving the impression you're surrounded by veins leading into a beating heart. Another exquisite detail comes in the form of the three potential names of our heroine- Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Linton and Catherine Heathcliff - scrawled longingly on the window. I couldn't help but pine with poor Cathy as the sun set on the countryside beyond.

If you're a Wuthering Heights head like me, then you're in luck. Cathy's room has been listed on Airbnb for couples. However, stays are very limited. Requests to book can be made from 12pm on February 20. Three lucky winners will be chosen to live their own Wuthering Heights dream. But fear not. If your name isn't picked out of the hat, you can still stay at Holdsworth House - just in one of the slightly more normal rooms.

After I'd had enough time playing at Cathy, we were taken back to the main house, where we were greeted with a colourful feast, straight out of the film. Then it was a visit to the room Mr Elordi, aka Heathcliff, stayed in. A plush, sage green sofa stood in front of a large bed decorated with red and pink cushions - another nod to the film.

While the professional staff members remained largely tight-lipped, I'm happy to report that the stars were particularly friendly during their stay. (Sophie Corcoran)

Read More

Bloom Heights

We read yesterday how tiresome it is to read about how an increasing number of people find novels like Wuthering Heights hard and cumbersome. We have the perfect retelling of them: a fourteen-minute (short!), audio (no reading at all!), erotic (engaging!) Wuthering Heights retelling.

Bloom Stories: Wuthering Heights

Written by Jaimee Bell 

With the voices of Sam Hughes + Phoebe

In our Wuthering Heights special, Heathcliff revels in memories of his beloved Catherine, for their unbreakable bond endures even in the afterlife. Passion, obsession, and destructive intimacy become consuming during a stormy night.

The Mirror has a whole article about it:

Speaking to Bloom Stories' writer Jaimee Bell and the lead male voice behind Heathcliff, Sam Hughes, the pair reveal how they uncovered the story’s most intense moments, despite the novel never explicitly voicing them.

“Wuthering Heights isn’t overtly sexual, but it’s dripping with desire. The erotic potential is in what’s withheld - the longing, the obsession and the intensity simmering just beneath the surface,” Jaimee explained. “The challenge wasn’t inventing heat, but finding a way to represent what was already there but never explicitly represented on the page.”

“We leaned into the moments Brontë leaves unsaid. The novel is full of charged silences and near-misses, so we zoned in on those emotional flashpoints and imagined what might have happened behind closed doors and how the central characters might have felt.”

For Sam, the audio format offered freedom to reinterpret Heathcliff beyond existing screen portrayals. “It read like a different version of the character. While I drew elements from the original, this version was an interpretation based on the great script. That freedom made it easier, rather than feeling restricted by the existing portrayal,” he said. (...)

“We’ve been careful to ensure the dynamic represented in our Wuthering Heights spin-off feels immersive, intense, escapist and reflective of the novel, but not exploitative or overly dark.” (Shannon Miller)

Read More

Why aren't we all ashamed to be admitting we've all forgotten how to read novels?

Last night, Paris saw its very own premiere of Wuthering Heights and so there are lots of sites talking about it. Harper's Bazaar describes Margot Robbie's look ('A dress that only Catherine Earnshaw could pull off'):

The dramatic Chanel gown blurred the lines between gothic romanticism and fantasy. The design featured a structured corset that plunged into a voluminous white skirt draped underneath waves of ruby-red velvet. Behind her, a waterfall of crimson fabric, punctuated by the occasional chunk of frilly scarlet feathers, cascaded down the gown’s long train.

Robbie continued her scarlet streak with her choice of accessories, opting for a thick velvet choker necklace in a similar shade of red as her dress. At the center of the necklace sat a massive champagne-colored gemstone, framed by a halo of smaller stones and embellished with a dangling teardrop-shaped crystal. (Chelsey Sanchez)

According to Daily Mail, 'Everyone is saying the same thing about Jacob Elordi's 'romantic' move towards Margot Robbie at Wuthering Heights Paris premiere'.

A clip of Jacob Elordi's very chivalrous act towards co-star Margot Robbie at the Paris premiere of Wuthering Heights on Monday has fans in a tizzy. 

In footage that has since gone viral, the Australian heartthrob, 28, can be seen rushing ahead of Margot, 35, as they arrived at Le Grand Rex for the VIP screening. 

After reaching the stairs leading to the stage, Jacob turns around and helps Margot carry the train of her velvet, Georgian-inspired Chanel gown. 

At one stage, Margot looked down from the top step and thanked her colleague for the romantic move. 

While Jacob's act was indeed very kind, fans are asking one very valid question: Why didn't someone else help her? 

Surely organisers would have known that Margot would be wearing such a dramatic gown, and that she would be required to climb a set of stairs prior to her arrival.

Further, there seem to be a number of staffers present in the video who could have lent a hand, rather than forcing the film's A-list lead actor to step in. 

Alongside a video of the moment, fans gushed over the moment with one writing, 'What a man.' 

Perhaps Jacob's gentlemanly display was part of a planned campaign to continue selling the chemistry between himself and Margot. (Monique Friedlander)

Just Jared shares lots of pictures of all the cast. Also on Page Six and many, many others. Elle (Australia) enjoys 'Decoding The ‘Wuthering Heights’ References In Margot Robbie’s Press Tour Style'.

Has a press tour wardrobe ever deserved an Oscar nomination? Margot Robbie and stylist Andrew Mukamal might require the Academy to create a new category. The pair reunited on February 2 as Robbie arrived in Paris wearing a Chanel gown designed by Matthieu Blazy for the occasion, signalling that the Wuthering Heights press tour would be anything but routine.

Margot Robbie famously put method dressing on the map during the Barbie promotional cycle, but with Wuthering Heights she has elevated the practice into something closer to high art. Mukamal has drawn on both the novel itself and a range of historical periods, blending antique silhouettes with modern fabrication and fantasy flourishes to create a distinctly baroque effect. [...]

Still, it is Mukamal’s conceptual approach that pushes this tour beyond celebrity styling and into the realm of fashion performance art. A history major who, as Robbie has noted, “really enjoys delving deep,” Mukamal has mined Brontë’s 1847 novel for specific passages that inform each look. The result is a series of visual Easter eggs that reward close attention, transforming the press tour into both a promotional campaign and a kind of literary annotation. (Ruby Feneley)

Allure shares 'Your Exclusive First Look at the Hair and Makeup in the “Wuthering Heights” Movie'.

For this edition, Johnson spoke with Siân Miller, the hair and makeup designer for “Wuthering Heights”, who gave Allure an exclusive first look at the film’s biggest beauty moments.

Siân Miller knew this would not be a traditional take on Wuthering Heights, the classic dark romance novel by Emily Brontë, when she signed on to design its hair and makeup looks. Directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Margot Robbie as Cathy alongside Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the film adaptation includes the same themes of love, revenge, and social class but renders them through an entirely different lens.

“What [Emerald] was really clear about from the beginning is that this was to be seen through the imagination of a 14-year-old girl—this was Emerald’s imagination,” says Miller, who previously worked on Saltburn with Fennell, Elordi, and Robbie (who produced the film). “It was clear that it would be a kind of fever dream.”

A BBC costume drama this was not—nor was it a literal, by-the-book adaptation. “I can't say I'm making ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It's not possible,” Fennel said in a recent interview with Fandango; that’s why she decided to put those quotation marks in the movie’s title. “What I can say is I'm making a version of it. There's a version that I remembered reading that isn't quite real. And there's a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is 'Wuthering Heights,' and it isn't."

While the film features some period-accurate wardrobe, hair, and makeup, it also incorporates imaginative elements, not unlike Sofia Coppola’s blend of modern and classical references in the 2006 Marie Antoinette film. Having seen “Wuthering Heights” myself, the best way I can describe it is a smorgasbord of visual decadence: surrealist art paired with dreary gothic fare. Prepared to be dazzled by the spectacle and overcome with jealousy over a myriad of things: the hair and the sex, for starters. Beauty connoisseurs will be in heaven.

Miller shared details on the hair and makeup exclusively with Allure: The film features between 35 and 40 different hairstyles on Robbie, including archival Chanel jewelry used as hair adornments and early-2000s Sienna Miller references. Miller researched and recreated historically faithful nail art originally made with eggshells and beetle blood (though no bugs were harmed in the making of these manicures). There’s an entire montage of makeup looks that you’ll miss if you blink, showcasing silver leaf on the eyes and black lips, and inspiration pulled from Pinterest alongside makeup artist Pat McGrath’s work with designers like John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, and Alexander McQueen.

Miller describes the hair and makeup as a combination of ’50s mid-century melodrama and Victorian excess with fantastical elements. [...]

Cathy’s Hair Evolution

As a girl living on the farmstead of Wuthering Heights, Cathy is shown with untamed and unkempt hair—a symbol of her wildness and a depiction of her life growing up running across the moors. If you’ve read the book or have seen other adaptations, you know she inevitably leaves home for the Grange, where she lives with her husband and married family, the Lintons. In these scenes, her hair is noticeably more controlled and sculptural; even when her hair is down, its texture is smoother and more defined.

During a pivotal scene at the Grange in which she taunts Heathcliff after his unexpected return, Cathy wears victory rolls Miller referred to as “horns,” an allusion to her devilish behavior. But as a viewer, it reads almost like a crown, insinuating her role as an evil queen. “It's where she becomes tougher,” Miller says. “She becomes a bit more of a bitch, she becomes harder. It's a more severe profile.”

The Veil-Covered Bridal Hair

One of Miller’s favorite looks is in Cathy’s wedding scene, where you actually won’t see her hair at all. It’s tragically concealed beneath her veil as she marches across the moors to marry Edgar Linton despite being in love with Heathcliff.

But Miller shows us that beneath that veil is a grid-like lattice braid decorated with gemstones using a glue gun. “That lattice is symbolic of her being caged: She’s going to marry Edgar, but she doesn’t really want to,” Miller says. “It’s symbolic of her being trapped.”

The Controlled Lady-of-the-House Look

After Cathy arrives at the Grange and adopts the role of housewife, her hairstyles evolve too, as Miller explains, to reflect Cathy’s emotional state: boredom. With little to do, Cathy and her sister-in-law, Isabella, experiment with Cathy’s look.

Some of the adornments she wears in her hair during these scenes are archival Chanel pieces sourced by costume designer Jacqueline Durran, while others are earrings and brooches repurposed for hairstyling during select scenes.

The “Doll Braids”

One of the most eye-catching hairstyles featured—which I predict will be replicated en masse—is a set of twin braids with a red ribbon woven between them and tied at the ends like a corset. Cathy wears these when she begins life at the Grange. In the movie, it’s Isabella who styles her hair this way; she sees Cathy as her own personal doll in more ways than one, hence Miller’s nickname for this style, the “doll braids.”

Finding the right shade of blonde and the right style of braids for this look was a challenge. Miller notes that the goal was to avoid veering into Game of Thrones or The Witcher territory, which featured icy white-blondes and warrior styling references. While the front pieces of Robbie’s own hair were blended with wig pieces and wefts for scenes at Cathy’s home of Wuthering Heights, she wore full wigs for these scenes at the Grange.

The Sweat-Inspired Makeup for Heathcliff’s Return

One of the film’s most modern looks took direct inspiration from the set design. In a tense dinner scene following Heathcliff’s return—now wealthy and in what Miller describes as his “Mr. Darcy era”—Cathy’s hair is adorned with pins and combs that Miller bedazzled by hand.

Her face is covered in gems inspired by the silver walls in the background, which are studded with clear stones (you’ll notice the walls speak metaphoric volumes in this film, so keep an eye on them). “It was almost supposed to look like sweat,” Miller says.

Everyone’s Blush and Flush

Flushed cheeks are their own character in the film—everyone sports some kind of blush, including the men. “We wanted this weather-beaten look for the characters at Wuthering Heights,” Miller says. “Jacob [Elordi] had it, the younger versions [of Cathy and Heathcliff] had it. With Cathy, I was inspired by the ‘pomegranate girl’ TikTok trend of 2024; that clean, flushed look.”

Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Liquid Blush in the shades Hope and Happy were applied for Cathy’s scenes at the Grange, as were Merit Flush Balm in Après and Postmodern and Pat McGrath Labs Divine Cream Blush. No.1 de Chanel Lip and Cheek Balm in Berry Boost was used for her looks at Wuthering Heights. Miller calls Kylie Cosmetics Hyrbid Blush in Winter Kissed, the shade used on Isabella, the “perfect baby doll pink.”

Cathy's lipstick oscillated between Burt’s Bees Tinted Lip Balm in Rose and a discontinued Kiehl’s Men’s Lip Balm to avoid any apparent lip lines. For some of the looks at the Grange, Robbie wore Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution Lipstick in Pillow Talk. (Kirbie Johnson)

Screen Rant claims that '2026 Is About To Have The Most Controversial Book Adaptation'. A contributor to Glamour claims that 'Wuthering Heights is not a difficult book' making some truly interesting points along the way.

Okay, this is, perhaps, a controversial take. And quite possibly one which will make a lot of people angry at me. But, for some reason, this is a hill (or, perhaps, a moor) I am willing to die on: Wuthering Heights is not that hard. And, yes, you should be able to read it. And yes, the number of people openly struggling to get through it is concerning.

Recently, my FYP has filled to the brim with a similar brand of video – videos of grown women who, after seeing the sexed up trailer for Emerald Fennel's version, have dashed to Waterstones to pick up their copies (Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi smouldering on the cover, naturally), perhaps expecting a BookTok-worthy rom-com, only to find that it is, in fact, a novel about class, inequality, racism, abuse and generational trauma.

There is also another genre of videos that sees people sharing guides to reading the book. Tips like highlight it within an inch of its life or, even worse, go to Sparknotes after each chapter for a summary.

Let's be real. Wuthering Heights is, compared to many classic novels, not all that difficult. Sure, a few characters have the same first names, but keeping track of the various Earnshaws and Lintons is a walk in the park compared to some of the Russian classics.

It is also a relatively simple narrative. It is largely plot-driven and mostly linear, once you get to grips with the rather simple story-within-a-story format. This is not a novel that experiments much with form. It is not, for instance, a work of poetic stream of consciousness. Try reading The Waves and get back to me.

In fact, Wuthering Heights is considered to be one of the easiest classics to read, so much so that it is (or was) often assigned to 16-year-old school kids.

Now, before I am accused of sounding snobbish, elitist, or privileged, I would like to clarify: this isn't about being university educated, or being brought up in a house filled with books, or being encouraged to read as a child. I really think this is more about our education system and the general downward spiral into a largely anti-intellectual society. Ours is, increasingly, a society that simply does not prize skills like critical thinking or long-form reading. I don't blame any of the individuals posting about not being able to read Wuthering Heights; I mainly blame the world we are living in. A world that, over the course of the last decade or so, has slowly but surely been teaching us that intelligence, thinking and reading don't really matter anymore.

In 2024, The Atlantic explored a growing trend of English students at top universities who arrived at their programs having never read a full novel. Why? Because apparently, their schools had stopped requiring it. Last year, The New York Times looked into the trend and found that, yes, teens are often now given only excerpts of books that they read on their laptops.

It's hardly surprising that we are also seeing a rise of AI bots designed to turn works of literature into bite-sized, digestible summaries. “Reading an entire book takes time, but understanding its core message doesn’t have to,” one book summariser proudly claims. All of this considered, should we be surprised that countless young people are tossing aside their copies of Wuthering Heights in frustration after 10 pages?

As someone who loves novels – not just for their plots, but, you know, for the actual experience of reading them cover-to-cover, I am disturbed by all of this. But even more so, I am concerned by the impulse to share it. I am reminded of my friend (who shall remain nameless) who, of late, has made her catch phrase “bring back shame.” Because honestly: WHY AREN'T WE ALL ASHAMED TO BE ADMITTING WE'VE ALL FORGOTTEN HOW TO READ NOVELS? Not only are people apparently unable to read books, but they also seem to be almost proud of it. Or at least proud enough to film themselves furrowing their brows as they gaze absently at the pages of their crisp new film edition of Wuthering Heights.

Okay. Rant over. (Meg Walters)

On the other hand, a columnist from Juicy Ecumenism discusses 'Wuthering Heights and the Distortions of Lust'. We 'loved' this bit:

While I think that Wuthering Heights is proof that the word “classic” is thrown around far too liberally, Brontë’s book does something more interesting than a generic bodice ripper. (Sarah Stewart)

A contributor to TimesNowNews claims that she 'Returned to ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Realised I Had Been Romanticising Abuse for Fifteen Years'.

Read More